China's spatial disparity within the context of industrial production efficiency: A macro study by the data-envelopment analysis (DEA) system

Regional disparity and production efficiency are two important and closely related issues in contemporary China. These issues are closely related because the increased degree of disparity in development across the provinces in recent years can, to a large extent, be attributed to the disparity in production efficiency across the provinces. The objective of this study is to re-examine China's production efficiency at the macro level by using the data-envelopment analysis system (DEA). Findings of this study suggest that pure technical industrial production efficiency across the provinces had, on average, deteriorated in 1991 when compared to the beginning of the reform period.